William Shakespeare as he lived Part 10

"And yet our friend. One joined heart and hand in that cause. And yet to die by our hands."

"Either he or ourselves, besides others implicated in the plot: nay, the cause itself demands the sacrifice."

"And he will be here to meet us?" inquired Charnock.

"He has sworn it."

"Which of us is to deal with him?"

"Why this question? The lot was drawn by you."

"Enough: and he is even now in concealment at Sir Hugh Clopton's. Is't not so?"

"So far I traced him by the mad acts he hath committed since leaving France, and by which conduct our faction is placed in jeopardy."

"But come; it still wants several minutes of the appointed time. Walk aside here, and I will tell you in how much the man is unfortunate in his position. You know the circ.u.mstance of his coming amongst us, and how he undertook to be the instrument, the steel, the dagger, as it were, by which our arch enemy was to be reached."

"I do, and how he refused to share the glory of the enterprise with others, and resolving to take the whole upon himself, suddenly and secretly set off, without further circ.u.mstance."

"There shone out the dangerous madness of the man," returned the other, "and by-and-by comes a reaction, by which we are all endangered, as thus: it appears that on his arrival in England this Parry was as suddenly seized with scruples, and under influence thereof he goes about to certain gentlemen, to advise with them as to the propriety of his undertaking this pious act. Luckily, it seems, he hath, as yet, consulted with men who are deemed at least safe, or we ourselves had scarce been here to-night. By some he was told that the enterprise was criminal and impious; whilst others, again, applauded it. Nay, even Ragazoni, the Nuncio, and the Pope himself (to whom he wrote a letter), desired him to persist in his resolution."

"Methinks that such authority might have satisfied his scruples."

"Not a whit as you shall hear; for so deeply did the fiend palter with him in favour of the heretic Elizabeth, that even when he had opportunity twice, thrice, nay, a dozen times repeated, he could not strike the blow."

"The evil one surely mounts guard over that iron-hearted woman," said Gifford, "or she could never have escaped the many designs set on foot to cut her off."

"One would think it," returned Charnock, "and in the instance I am speaking of, she seems to have been specially guarded by some familiar; inasmuch as although Parry, albeit he managed matters so well that he gained an introduction and a private audience of the Queen, no sooner did he find himself in the presence, than his scruples returned with so much force, that he commenced an exhortation in place of driving his dagger to her heart; and after praying of her to tender her life, and grant us Catholics more indulgence in the exercise of our religion, he actually informed her there were numerous conspiracies at that moment formed against her."

"And how escaped he being apprehended and examined?" inquired Gifford.

"Ah, there consists the marvel," returned Charnock; "but it seems the Queen looked upon him as a harmless maniac, and took little account of what he uttered. She trusted for safety to G.o.d and to her people's love, she said, and so dismissed him."

"Indeed," continued Charnock, "it seems then, that the interview for the time completely prostrated all Parry's energies; and lest he should be tempted, as he owned, by the opportunities he found of approaching her ere his words could have effect, he always came to court unprovided with any offensive weapon."

"And then he afterwards relapsed into his former violence; was't not so?"

"It was. He returned to France, saw the Nuncio and Ragazoni, became again confirmed in his first intent, and has again recrossed to England, where his madness and his extravagant conduct are likely to compromise all his friends. Nay, an he is not speedily silenced, we shall a.s.suredly perish by the gibbet."

During the foregoing conversation of the conspirators, thus met in the seclusion of the churchyard of Stratford, (a trysting place they had fixed on as more likely than any other to be unmolested by the prying eyes and ears of the curious,) they had slowly traversed round the sacred edifice; and now, as the taller stranger finished his discourse, they arrived at the north porch, and stood concealed in its shadow.

"We seek an edifice dedicated to the service of religion for a strange and awful purpose," said Gifford, as he gazed along the footpath leading from the church.

"Since it is to serve the purposes of the true religion," said Charnock, "let us trust to the greatness of the cause to sanctify our doings. Hast thou any scruples?"

"None," said Gifford. "But time pa.s.ses. How, if our man fail?"

"That would bode us ill," said Charnock; "though I think it unlikely that he will do so. Between the hours of one and two was the time I appointed him to be here, and he swore to me that he would not fail."

"And how didst thou get opportunity of speech with him?" inquired Gifford.

"By following him to Clopton soon after his arrival; where I gained an interview, and bade him hither in the name of our leader. Hark, the signal; 'tis he!" and the two conspirators advanced along the path, whilst at the same time footsteps were heard.

CHAPTER XI.

THE STRATFORD LAWYER.

The arrival of strangers to take up their abode for any length of time in such a town as Stratford-upon-Avon, always furnished matter of curiosity and speculation amongst the inhabitants. The neighbours were known to each other so well, and there was comparatively so little travel, that a certain degree of suspicion attached to all new-comers in those dangerous days. When any of the townsmen had business, even a few miles off, it was usual for them to arrange matters go that two or three might travel in company. Neighbour Fustian, the hosier, having business in Warwick, agreed to travel the road in company with neighbour Lambe, the glover, whose trade made him a visitor to Coventry, whilst the latter stayed the convenience of mine host of the Falcon, who was, peradventure, bound for the latter town, and all three, mounted and armed, went and returned in company, rather than trust purse and person singly to the chances of the road.

Robbing on the highway, although by no means so common as in the preceding reign, was still frequent. The woods were thick in this part of Warwicks.h.i.+re, and the gentlemen of the shade found it easy to elude pursuit after a highway robbery. Nay, but a few short years before, and during the York and Lancaster feuds, which had deluged the land with blood; what with disbanded men-at-arms, thieves, and caitiffs of one sort or other, the roads were but cut-throat defiles, and the country round a continued battle-field.

So that during the troublous reign of Henry VI. it had been especially ordered, that between the towns of Coventry, Warwick, and Stratford-upon-Avon, the highways should be widened, by cutting down trees on either hand, in order that travellers and wayfarers might have more room to defend themselves against the numerous robbers and caitiffs infesting those parts.

On the morning following the transactions we have recorded in the foregoing chapter, there were several subjects of interest commented upon and discussed in the little back room which const.i.tuted the office of one Pouncet Grasp, the head-lawyer of the town. One was the sojourn of several strangers, whom no one knew anything about, at one of the hostels: another was a dark and alarming rumour of a suspicious sort of illness having broken out in the suburbs: and another was the circ.u.mstance of a man, having all the appearance of a person of condition, having been found, stabbed in several places, and lying, with the pockets of his doublet rifled, a stiffened and unhandsome corse, in the road leading to the ferry beyond the church.

Master Pouncet Grasp himself was seated upon a high stool near the window of his office, which looked into a green and bowery garden, having at its further extremity a most pleasant bowling-green; the river just to be distinguished in the distance beyond, amongst the marshy meadows.

Some two or three clerks were seated in different parts of the apartment, all busily engaged, pen in hand, scrawling strange hieroglyphics upon certain sheets of parchment before them, making a dreadful sound of incessant scribbling with their pens.

Master Grasp himself, the monarch of all he surveyed, and an especial tyrant over the unfortunate clerks he presided over, was the only personage in that small apartment who seemed to have freedom of thought and motion, and license to take his attention from the crackling parchments beneath his nose.

If our readers have ever taken the trouble to picture to themselves the clerk of Chatham, with his pen and ink-horn hung round his neck, they will have some idea of the figure of our Stratford lawyer in his own office. Only that, whereas we imagine the clerk of Chatham to have been a sort of dreamy, drawling person, Master Pouncet was rather more swift, sententious, and mercurial. Law had sharpened his wit, irritated his temper, levelled his honesty, and urged his avarice.

Any one to have watched him when alone in his glory, and only seen by his clerks, would have taken him to be half insane. The moment, however, a client or a stranger appeared, he put on a new face and a demeanour suited to the occasion; appearing wise in council, amiable in disposition, and staid and sober in manners, whereas before he had been like a chattering ape irritated with a hot chestnut.

"Now do I wonder who these strangers may be," he said, leaving off his writing and jumping round in his seat; "truly I must run down to goodman Doubletongue and confer with him on the subject. Will Shakespeare," he said, jumping back again, "get thee down to----Ah, I forgot that pestilent Shakespeare hath not been to the office for a whole week. Ah, the caitiff! Oh, the villain! See, too," he said, opening his desk and searching amongst his papers, "the vile rubbish he inditeth when he is here in place of copying what is set before him. What! you grin there, do ye? driving wights that ye are. Grin, my masters, _whilst ye work_, an ye list. But, an ye _leave off_ to grin, see an I brain ye not with this ruler. Shakespeare--ah, a pretty name that, and a precious hounding scamp is the fellow that owns it. Here's goodly stuff toward! Here's loves of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses for you! Here's Venus, Adonis, Cytherea, hid in the rushes; Proserpina and Pluto, besides half a dozen heathen deities, devils, satyrs, and demiG.o.ds, all dancing the hays in a lump!"

So saying, Pouncet Grasp turned over the leaves of a sort of ma.n.u.script poem, written upon a quant.i.ty of backs of letters and dirty sheets of paper, and, after glancing through the contents, sent them fluttering and flying at the head of one of his clerks.

"There," said he, "that's the way my ink is spoiled, and my doc.u.ments destroyed. I suppose now, that your friend and crony there," he continued, addressing himself to the young man at whose head he had thrown the ma.n.u.script, "I suppose your unintelligible friend calls that incomprehensible and unaccountable rubbish a sort of rough draught of a poem. I'm not learned in such productions, but methinks he that wrote of such lewd doings ought to be whipped at the cart's tail, or put in the stocks at least."

"I was not aware," said the youth addressed, (and who under cover of his industry had been laughing all the time Master Grasp was reading the poem), "I was not aware William Shakespeare has ever written a poem about the G.o.ds."

"_Si-lence_," cried Grasp, sticking his pen behind his ear and looking fierce, as he wheeled round and faced about, first to one and then to another of his clerks. "_Si-lence_, ye scoundrel scribblers, or by the Lord Harry----"

The clerk, who knew from experience the irritable nature of his taskmaster, took the hint and redoubled his exertions with the pen and parchment before him, only occasionally, as he stole a furtive glance at his companions and observed the lawyer's attention in another direction, lolling out his tongue or executing a hideous grimace at him.

"I pr'ythee, sirs, inform me," said Grasp, again interrupting the silence he had commanded, "when was that mad-headed ape last in this office?"

"Of whom was it your pleasure to speak?" inquired the youth who had received the compliment of the poem at his head.

"Of whom should I speak, sinner that I am, but of him of whom I _last spoke_--that incomprehensible, uncontrollable varlet--that scribbler of bad verse--that idle companion of thine?"

"He was here but yesterday," said the lad.